


Left to Our Own Devices

by Cain_Dreemurr



Category: Ib (Video Game)
Genre: Nonbinary Character, Post canon, forgotten portrait ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 15:56:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18803530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cain_Dreemurr/pseuds/Cain_Dreemurr
Summary: After the final fight Mary finds herself alone again.





	Left to Our Own Devices

**Author's Note:**

> Garry uses feminine pronouns in the game, the translation doesn't exactly have this continue so? I use they/them pronouns for them and read them as a nonbinary person.

Mary opened wide eyes and pulled herself to sitting. Her body ached with the strain of sleeping on the floor, discarded to her imaginative world and so terribly alone. She pushed her messy curls back from her face and looked around once. No one. 

"...anyone?" she whispered, knowing there wouldn't be an answer. The fight was done. 

Her portrait was whole once more, not that it mattered to her. She didn't know how it had happened, but the mystery didn't matter either. The large frame was coated in a fine layer of ash but the canvas stood as it always had, ready for her. Mary shuddered and stood. The young girl dusted off her skirt and sighed before picking her way back through her sketchbook. Towards the main gallery. 

Would anyone be there? Mary thought to herself, surely Ib wouldn’t be. The other girl had been so scared. Frankly she had every right to be but Mary hated to think that. She had acted so cruel and reckless. So much for friends. 

If she was awake others were too, not that they were ever good company. As Mary moved through the dimly lit halls she saw a few. Disembodied torsos, women who would only shriek and crawl towards her like some sort of horrifying bug. Mary could hear them too. She noted the scuttling and clicking sounds of mannequins who wouldn't speak to her in the next room over. They were likely just walking in circles again, no purpose, no drive. 

“Never mind this lot,” she said softly. The first floor of her search had been useless. She moved on. Her footfalls were soft on the carpet as she climbed a set of stairs. This was such lonely business for an uncertain outcome. 

Mary reached up and grabbed a lock of her blonde hair, tugging lightly out of anxiety. She waved to a small blue doll with her free hand as she passed it in the hall, but moved forward. Ib was likely gone, but Mary had to know for sure.

It was hours before she found sign that she hadn’t just made up the entire encounter and by then she had chewed her lip raw from frustration. No one breathing, nothing out of place, but there at the end of a hall stood a new painting.

Bathed in a flickering light and framed in gold, it was as large as her portrait. Mary moved closer tentatively, her feet shuffling forward awkwardly. She couldn’t tell if they were awake. If they were… well she didn’t want to think of what might happen. 

"You don't hate me right?" Mary asked looking up with shining eyes at the large portrait, clearly Ib's companion, Garry. "We were both lonesome, right? You’re not mad?" 

The person trapped on canvas said nothing. They looked the same as they had the last Mary had seen them. Slumped over as though asleep with Garry’s dyed hair falling to obscure their face. Mary swallowed around the lump in her throat. 

“I get it you know,” She tried again, thinking to how patient the older member of their troupe had been with her and Ib. Mary felt a deep pang of guilt in her stomach. It made her feel sick. “You had…” she took a breath. “You had a right to not trust me. I was horrible to you and Ib towards the end and..” 

Nothing. Garry didn’t move. The only movement was that of the light, still flickering as though it were laughing. They didn’t look up even to yell or snap or tell Mary off. 

“Well you can’t blame me,” she said with a huff, trying to make herself feel more like herself and less like she was falling to bits. Tears began to spill from Mary’s eyes anyway and they carved hot paths down to her chin.   

"I was just trying to find a way to stop feeling so empty!" She screamed at the painting, small hands balled up in what she couldn't discern between anger and misery. "You ruined it!"

Again, Gary said nothing. The girl in front of them kicked the wall and revelled in the dull thunk of it for a moment until she once again noticed the other hadn’t moved. 

"Say something…" She could get out before her voice choked with a sob. 

Mary shook and grabbed hold of her skirt now, knuckles white. She could feel the half moon indents where her nails had cut her palms and she cried for the pain. She cried for someone to hold her. She cried for herself. 

"Can you even hear me?" she asked the painting, looking up at it. Taking in the ornate blue roses that mimicked the style of her own portrait. She had done this. Mary was the reason they were trapped here with her in this fabricated world. 

Her face scrunched with pain and her knees shook. "Are you ignoring me? Say something!”

Her knees buckled. 

Sitting now on the floor Mary looked up again at the young adult that had turned on her so quickly. They were the only one who likely would be able to hold a conversation if they woke. Garry was smart, they knew things and could read every word of the books in the big libraries that Mary had been trying to understand for years. The two would be able to have fun conversations on any topic. 

Or maybe, as Mary thought to herself, not that she’d admit it, Garry would've been able to hug her or maybe pat her head and offer her a small reminder that she was safe. But even such a selfish though didn’t seem likely.

Silence. 

Deep silence that settled over the gallery's chamber like a suffocating wool blanket and Mary sobbed again in response. Her chest felt tight.  

"Please…" she whimpered, "Garry I'm sorry." They didn't move still and Mary was starting to give up hope. 

"I just don't want to be alone" she said, voicing her feelings out loud. Her lip trembled and she silently begged every sort of higher power to have Garry reply. But there wasn't one and Mary realized there never will be.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> anyway, I'm not exactly the happiest with how this came out but I really wanted to share because Mary is very dear to my heart and has been for forever and a day. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
